Grammys 2013: Dan Auerbach wins big, Mumford & Sons claim top prize

Marcus Mumford takes a bite out of the Grammy for album of the year, which British folk group Mumford & Sons garnered for their second disc, Babel. Photo: Jason Merritt, Getty Images

Most of the talk going into Sunday’s Grammy Awards at Staples Center centered on R&B newcomer Frank Ocean. Would the buzz over not just his evident talent but his coming out in a genre not exactly known for gay stars help make him the night’s big winner?

Apparently not. Ocean, one of several artists with six nominations apiece ahead of the 55th annual ceremony, wound up among a handful of acts to claim two prizes in one of the most topsy-turvy, spread-about Grammys in recent memory.

Both of his wins were notable for such a fast-rising career yet neither came in major categories. He shared best rap/sung collaboration with Jay-Z and Kanye West for “No Church in the Wild” and scored the urban contemporary album honor, a newly amalgamated category, for his widely (and rightly) hailed disc Channel Orange.

Instead, diminutive Dan Auerbach, bearded ginger and unassumingly soulful frontman of the Black Keys, led the night, racking up four notices in all without snagging a single top trophy. Three of those wins – for rock album (El Camino), rock song and rock performance (the latter two for “Lonely Boy”) – also belong to Patrick Carney, the duo’s bespectacled drumming half.

Their tally ties them for second place with Jay, Kanye, Australian star Gotye (whose inescapable “Somebody That I Used to Know” was named record of the year) and Grammy’s go-to electronic music figure, Skrillex, who once again swept the dance fields. Auerbach’s fourth nod came as producer of the year, non-classical, while his behind-the-boards work provided an assist to another winner, Dr. John’s Locked Down, which earned the Hall of Famer his sixth statuette, this time for best blues album.

Big winners not winning big prizes isn’t anything new at the Grammys, though usually left-field leaders emerge from jazz and classical realms. What’s weirder, if happily so, is how folk sensation Mumford & Sons walked off with album of the year for their platinum-selling sophomore work Babel.

It’s the second such win in a row for Brits, Adele’s monster smash 21 having swept last year. Yet that same M&S disc failed to win in its genre category, losing the Americana race to veteran favorite Bonnie Raitt, who earned her 10th title.

“I was up against all these guys who had much bigger records and a bigger splash,” the 63-year-old commented on her win for Slipstream, having sung similar praises of Mumford, the Lumineers and the like during pre-telecast proceedings at Nokia Theatre, when 70 of the 81 awards were handed out. “It makes an old girl feel good.”

It isn’t an undeserved win – just not a logical one. Perhaps it was the recently added umbrella tag “Americana” that threw off voters, who opted for a roots-preserving legend over four English upstarts. How else to explain the inconsistency? (Mumford's only other nod, by the way, was for best long-form music video, for the film Big Easy Express.)

The Black Keys’ rock wins, after all – each one trumping a legend who looms larger than Raitt: Bruce Springsteen – all made sense given their nominations in top match-ups. Similarly, song and record of the year nominee Kelly Clarkson was an obvious favorite to win best pop vocal album (which she nabbed for Stronger), while it made sense that Gotye and guest vocalist Kimbra took pop duo/group performance over fun., the breakout trio whose ebullient anthem “We Are Young” was declared song of the year.

Gotye’s Making Mirrors winning best alternative music album, however, over far stronger and decidedly edgier works by Fiona Apple and Tom Waits is another insult to the already rocky history of that particular award. There ought to be a Grammy bylaw disqualifying candidates from that category should they also be up for top honors or pop prizes.

Less surprising – but still something of a snub toward Ocean – is the best new artist win by fun., the first act to score nominations in all four major categories since Christopher Cross’ inexplicable trouncing in 1981.

They merited song of the year, frontman Nate Ruess displaying some humility over the accolade: “I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote the chorus to this song,” he joked. “This is in HD, everyone can see our faces, and we are not very young.”

But though the group mostly lives up to its moniker, fun. doesn’t show half as much promise as Ocean. So what’s up with him being shut out of his three biggest competitions?

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